The Time Machine


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machine. But I saw nothing moving, in earth or sky or sea. The green  
slime on the rocks alone testified that life was not extinct. A  
shallow sandbank had appeared in the sea and the water had receded  
from the beach. I fancied I saw some black object flopping about  
upon this bank, but it became motionless as I looked at it, and I  
judged that my eye had been deceived, and that the black object was  
merely a rock. The stars in the sky were intensely bright and seemed  
to me to twinkle very little.  
'Suddenly I noticed that the circular westward outline of the sun  
had changed; that a concavity, a bay, had appeared in the curve. I  
saw this grow larger. For a minute perhaps I stared aghast at this  
blackness that was creeping over the day, and then I realized that  
an eclipse was beginning. Either the moon or the planet Mercury was  
passing across the sun's disk. Naturally, at first I took it to be  
the moon, but there is much to incline me to believe that what I  
really saw was the transit of an inner planet passing very near to  
the earth.  
'The darkness grew apace; a cold wind began to blow in freshening  
gusts from the east, and the showering white flakes in the air  
increased in number. From the edge of the sea came a ripple and  
whisper. Beyond these lifeless sounds the world was silent. Silent?  
It would be hard to convey the stillness of it. All the sounds of  
man, the bleating of sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects,  
the stir that makes the background of our lives--all that was over.  
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